Data Warehousing for Google Analytics Data

How it works

Needl uses the Google Analytics API to extract and enhance your data and then store it in BigQuery - Google's cloud data warehousing solution. An initialization will go back in time to build up your data and then make daily updates. The BigQuery account can be your own or we can host it for you.

The Google Analytics API limits the number of dimensions requested in a single query, Needl overcomes this by sending off multiple queries and stitching the results together.

BigQuery connects well with analytics tools such as Data Studio and Google’s ML platform. Give your data a proper home!

Features:

• Session (and hit) level data rather than aggregated - with daily updates.
• Over 50 dimensions supported as standard - see typical schema below. Google's Analytics API normally restricted to 7.
• Hit level data - pages visited during a session supported as standard.
• Client Id extracted - connect users sessions over time to allow more sophisticated analysis, for example channel attribution using a Markov model.
• Weather data added per session as standard.
• Sampling can be avoided - run reports across date ranges and as long as there is less than 500K sessions per day, no sampling involved.
• Bucketed dimensions added to aid analytics:
  • technology = deviceCategory + operatingSystem + browser
  • daypart = combined dayOfWeek and hour
• User local time added as standard - note that Analytics only reports times based on server time.
• Custom dimensions supported on a request basis.

See it in action

Example dataset in BigQuery:

https://console.cloud.google.com/bigquery?project=needlbq&p=needlbq&d=public&t=demo&page=table

Typical Schema

Fields not available in Google Analytics are shown with a description.